The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday for a global moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding; its symbolic weight made barely a ripple in the news ocean of the United States, where governments’ right to kill a killer is enshrined in law and custom.

Go to The Board » But for those who have been trying to move the world away from lethal revenge as government policy, this was a milestone. The resolution failed repeatedly in the 1990s, but this time the vote was 104 to 54, with 29 nations abstaining. Progress has come in Europe and Africa. Nations like Senegal, Burundi, Gabon — even Rwanda, shamed by genocide — have decided to reject the death penalty, as official barbarism.

The United States, as usual, lined up on the other side, with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq. Together this blood brotherhood accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s executions, according to Amnesty International. These countries’ devotion to their sovereignty is rigid, as is their perverse faith in execution as a criminal deterrent and an instrument of civilized justice. But out beyond Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Myanmar, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, there are growing numbers who expect better of humanity.

Many are not nations or states but groups of regular people, organizations like the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic movement begun in Italy whose advocacy did much to bring about this week’s successful vote in the General Assembly.

They are motivated by hope — and there is even some in the United States. The Supreme Court will soon hear debate on the cruelty of execution by lethal injection. On Monday, New Jersey became the first state in 40 years to abolish its death penalty.

That event, too, left much of this country underwhelmed. But overseas, the votes in Trenton and the United Nations were treated as glorious news. Rome continued a tradition to mark victories against capital punishment: it bathed the Colosseum, where Christians once were fed to lions, in golden light.

It is rather unfortunate that no mention has been given of the Transnational Radical Party and “Hands Off Cain“, the organizations that have initiated the whole process almost 14 years ago. But the fact that the NYT deemed it important enough to warrant an editorial, should be placate those claiming the Moratorium, as a nonbinding document, is a useless document or worse.

For other articles on the Moratorium:

(1) On the Los Angeles Times, an opinion piece “The UN’s Death Blow” by Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

(2) On BBC News, a Special Report “UN votes for death penalty freeze” with words from the Singapore and Mexican ambassadors and the “detail” that only 51 nations still retain the right to use death penalty

(4) On the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German), an article “Die guten Menschen von Rom” about the Community of Sant’Egidio mentioned by the New York Times’ editorial.

(5) On the Tagesenzeiger (Swiss, in German), an editorial “Ein Akt der Zivilisation” that makes the rather obvious points that dangerous criminals should be locked up, and the death penalty, whatever one thinks of it, is arrogant and archaic.

December 18 may go down in history as the largest Italian foreign policy victory in more than 140 years. And finally, one will be able to say that Italy has given something to international politics, something else than the the invention of Fascism.

In any case, it will be the culmination of almost 14 years of efforts:

(1) In 1994, following an initiative by “Hands Off Cain” and the Transnational Radical Party, the Italian Government asked the UN General Assembly to vote on a document asking all Member States to stop capital executions. The resolution did not pass by just 8 votes.

(2) In 1997, the Moratorium was approved by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The same Commission has approved it since, every single year.

(3) In the meanwhile, the number of States still having the death penalty in their penal codes has gone down from 97 (in 1994) to 48 now.

(4) The Moratorium was presented to the UN General Assembly in 1999, by the European Union that proceeded to inexplicably withdraw it.

(5) During the past year, “Hands Off Cain” and the Transnational Radical Party have been working relentlessly for more than one year with Parliaments, Governments and citizens the world over, to get the resolution once again submitted for a UN General Assembly vote.

(6) The Italian Parliament lower Chamber and the European Parliament have unanimously declared support for the resolution. Signatories to an “Appeal for the Moratorium” included 55 Nobel Prize winners and tens of thousands more people.

(7) On June 18, 2007 the European Union General Affairs Council decided to present the resolution to the UN General Assembly’s 62th Session in September.

(8) On November 15, 2007 the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly approved the resolution as presented by Italy and 86 more countries from all continents. Votes have been 99 in favour, 52 against.

Finally, sometimes on December 18, 2007 the whole UN General Assembly will be asked to approve the Moratorium.

According to a communiqué by the Italian Government dated September 11, the text of the Resolution for a Universal Moratorium on Capital Punishment will be presented to the UN the day after, September 25.

The Members of the Transnational Nonviolent Radical Party, of the “Hands Off Cain” association and of the Italian Radical Party have however not forgotten that in 14 years the approval of the Resolution has been compromised three times, by mistakes and delays caused by, if not outright ostracising behaviour from, several European Governments.

Above all, for more than a decade the European Council bureaucracy in Brussels has hindered the voting of the Universal Moratorium on Capital Punishment at the UN General Assembly, where the number of member nations still using the death penalty has been reduced to a mere fifth of the total.

In order for the Resolution pro-Moratorium (for emphasis: moratorium on the death penalty, not abolition) to be presented at the opening of the General Assembly on September 24, we must strengthen our nonviolent movement right now – and more than ever before.

At the same time, an extraordinary number of people have become members to show their support.

Becoming a member is in fact a vital part of the nonviolent action supporting the Transnational Radical Party, “Hands Off Cain” and the Italian Radical Party in their effort to provide the UN General Assembly the chance to vote the Resolution for a Universal Moratorium on Capital Punishment.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE INITIATIVE (click on the link of your chosen option):